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Chapter 5
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in A Grain of Wheat, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Colonialism
The Individual vs. the Community
Guilt and Redemption
Christianity
Gender and Power
Summary
Analysis
Years before, Gikonyo is one of the first men released from the detention camps and allowed to return home. His time in prison seems to have taught him self-governance, and through shrewd-thinking and strict discipline, Gikonyo quickly rises from poverty to wealth. During the harvest, he buys more food than he needs and hoards it until everyone else in Thabai is running out, when he can sell his goods at marked-up prices, beginning his trade as a merchant. Though much struggle is involved, soon Gikonyo is selling produce to Nairobi as well, employing drivers and greasing palms to move his goods without hassle. He becomes an icon for mothers to idolize before their sons, a symbol of the wealth that hard work can bring.
In the eyes of his community, Gikonyo is a self-made man, wealthy and successful through his own hard work and shrewd thinking. Gikonyo’s high standing in the eyes of his community despite his own internal weakness and burden of guilt mirrors Mugo’s characterization. Mugo will similarly become a venerated figure of Thabai in spite of personal weakness and an overwhelming level of guilt over a past crime.
Themes
This particular afternoon, Gikonyo is to meet with an MP in Nairobi about buying a five-acre farm in collaboration with a few business partners to create a new agriculture cooperative. He takes a bus into Nairobi, wondering why no Africans run shops in the European-dominated city and hoping that someday, black businessmen such as himself will run the place. Gikonyo meets with the MP to ask for a loan and the MP tells him it is possible, but will take a few days. When Gikonyo asks if he should find the money some other way, the MP seems nearly alarmed and promises him that he will take care of it; he simply has to handle some politicians first.
Gikonyo’s aspirations reflect the aspirations of the Movement and the hope that an independent Kenya will be run by native Kenyans. This is particularly poignant for cities like Nairobi whose construction was largely due to the knowledge and organization of British engineering. This complicates the fight for independence, then, as Kenya fights for its ability to self-govern while maintaining the technological progress brought about by colonialism.
Themes
All over the region, people are discussing Mugo as the leader of the Uhuru celebrations. His hard time in detention have given him a powerful physical stature and the firm lines of his face invite people to trust him. Even so, Mugo is troubled, wishing that any other person would be chosen for such praise and adulation rather than him. He does not go to work his land for fear of meeting any of last night’s visitors, and instead decides to walk to Rung’ei, Thabai’s marketplace.
Mugo’s role as the unlikely, unwilling hero would be nearly comical if the circumstances and Kenya’s fight for independence were not such a serious context for the story. By drawing on the comedic archetype of an unwitting hero, the author gives his story a slightly absurd tone, which contrasts with the horror of many of the events involved.
Themes
As he walks, Mugo recalls the only time he has ever given a speech, at a council he had attended to commemorate the martyrs of the detention camps. While others make great speeches about national pride and black suffrage, Mugo stands and states that for most, it was not virtue or national pride that drove them to survive, but merely the desire to come home. He stops midway through his speech, disgusted by his own show of courage—which he sees as falsehood—but the hearers are impressed, interpreting his silence and reticence as emotional depth and dignity, saying, “Those were words from no ordinary heart.” As he walks to Rung’ei, Mugo toys with the idea of accepting the role as leader, even though he betrayed Kihika.
Although Mugo hides the truth of his crimes for much of the novel, his occasional honesty turns out to be his most redeeming virtue. That honesty is previewed here in his willingness to admit that his time in detention was not consumed with noble thoughts of national pride, but the simple, self-interested desire to go home. While it is slightly humorous that Mugo’s reticence is misinterpreted as emotional depth, the point that Mugo has “no ordinary heart” is, in its own way, true, demonstrated by his occasional willingness to tell the truth bluntly and without fear of the personal cost.
Themes
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When Mugo arrives at his hut, he finds Gikonyo waiting for him. He assumes that Gikonyo is waiting for an answer on behalf the Party, but Gikonyo tells him he is actually there to confess, and felt he needed to so before someone with a “great heart” such as Mugo. Unlike Mugo, Gikonyo says, he confessed the oath while in detention, hoping he would be sent home. Mugo understands this, since Gikonyo has a wife and mother—and admits that he himself had nothing to confess—but Gikonyo insists that he was a great coward while Mugo was strong and firm. Now that he is home with his mother and beautiful wife Mumbi, Mugo cannot understand why Gikonyo could be troubled. But Gikonyo tells him that Mumbi is not the same, saying, “God, I sold my soul, for what? Where is the Mumbi I left behind?”
Once again, even though Mugo does not believe he has a “great heart” as Gikonyo says he does, Mugo still possesses a stoicism (through his detachment) that allows Gikonyo to feel comfortable making his confession to Mugo and Mugo alone. Thus, Mugo is a complex hero. The people around him see him as noble, but he secretly believes himself to be wretched. Despite his own beliefs and his admittedly pitiable demeanor, Mugo still possesses qualities of (intermittent) honesty and an odd stoicism that truly benefits his community.
Themes
